TriRodent

Well, if A3 is your favorite Spiderweb game (mine too...) then no, this won't turn out to be your new favorite. It is however a good, solid, fun game that is worth both your time & money (& at about $0.40/hr for play time you're probably not going to find a better bargain out there .... well, at least not until GOG runs a 80% off sale again....but I digress & besides, those 80% off games are 15-20 years old). Enjoy, there's something cool/special about playing a new game from a favorite company, & this is a good one.

I was just thinking that an interesting side quest or three would be delivering seed packets of fungus to the various caverns throughout Avernum & slowly having the map grow more visible permanently as it spread itself around (prior to that the map would stay dark except for the immediate area that you're in as it's so completely dark down there always). Cartography quests to map out the ever expanding cave systems... Low level quests to break cave lizards to harness (probably much like the thump on ogres/giants quest in A5) All sorts of fun things are possible in such a frontier oriented time frame

It's been a while since I finished it but Jeff really has balanced out the game quite well. IIRC I reached L30 right before the end game section started (while doing most of the side quests (normal difficulty)). So while not perfect, it was nothing like hitting the cap like you did in the previous game. Play it & enjoy, it really is a well done final chapter to the trilogy.

Congrats & may your future be brighter than that of glowing fungus... You may want to think up a story ahead of time though given the timing of the wedding. I can just see this: "So how was the honeymoon?" "Great, we sat next to each other on the couch, each with our own laptop & played Avadon 3 long into the night....." Now we'd completely understand, but others......

Let me add my thanks too. Having decided to once again do some spelunking while waiting on Avadon 3 to arrive, finding that someone has done some recent cartography was a nice surprise to stumble across. Kudos

In addition to the weekend thing already mentioned, Jeff is focusing right now on getting Avadon 3 ready for it's mid Sept. release (I'd assume anyway). If you were to email him early-mid October with the same question you'd probably get a response right away (once the initial chaos of a new release has died down a bit).

Well let's see, from where I am now Ohio is about 12 miles north of me, so technically in 'the south'. However the southernmost point in Ohio is several miles south of me (& several dozen off to one side), so It's hard to pick 'the south' when parts of 'the north' are south of me.... confused yet? So I could justifiably pick 'Ohio' as that's much closer to me than the states that I do consider 'the south', but then again that would associate me with Cleveland & I just don't want that. 'Other' it is then.... As to the other developing thread offshoot - my parents lived/still live in a '1' & I did spend a few years in my own '1', however the vast majority of my home ownership (2 houses spanning 25+ years out of 30ish) has been with a '2'. So with regards to the polls, put my square peg into whatever round hole you want. As usual I'm hard to classify/quantify

Some great suggestions in here, thank you all (I too am looking for something new to play - at least up until Sept 14th when Avadon 3 comes out (according to Jeff's FB post of 15 min ago...)).

I'm replaying Avadon 1 at the moment and have encountered something a few times that is quite annoying (although it may have been addressed in A2). When using an AoE spell that actually is an area rather than a cone (such as Ice Storm compared to Lightning Wind for Nathalie) it would be great to know what the furthest distance you can cast that without moving is (just don't allow targeting an area you can't reach). Far too many times I've been in a battle that has a horde of cannon fodder off in the near distance, perfect for Ice Storm, and to cast it where I want to Nathalie takes off running in front of her two meat shields (because she wasn't close enough), stops right next to a powerful enemy & casts the spell. Enemy's turn & 'whack' down goes Nathalie. Knowing just how far she could cast that spell would be very useful information to have. Of course an argument could be made that Nathalie is just an impetuous teenager & running off beyond safe limits is just something that teenagers do.... (edit: And right after posting I realized that this should probably be in the 'wishlist' thread...sorry - still waiting for coffee to kick in....)

It's been a while since I was on that side of the cave but I think that I let her go, grabbed the pass & left. Later on I was back up that way for some reason & went back into the fort & she was back in her office begging once again for her life. So if you let her go but want to clear the quest go back & see if she's there again. (sorry I can't be more positive/certain how it happened but it was a while ago & was one of those "huh, that's weird" type of things that I really didn't pay much attention to. Your question though stirred up the memory...)

More of a general hint but realize that Jeff really doesn't like empty spaces in his towns/dungeons/maps. In built up areas (such as towns or dungeons that had lots of construction in them - rather than free formed caves) there's a good chance that any decent sized/oddly placed blank spots on the auto map contain a hidden room (such as in Gnass the entire right side of Pathass' temple is a black area while the rest of the down is discovered/mapped out). It's not always true but when you see a blank area in town or an oddly shaped dungeon where there 'might' be room to fit another room or two, it's probably worth your time to look extra closely at nearby walls for a hidden switch or two.

Sixus has some sugar in his Trapped Halls available for picking up if you are also counting those that don't have to be paid for. In which case there are generally bags of sugar wherever you bump into Empire troops who've set up residence somewhere (Vahatani Fortress, Elderan's Tower, Grey Pass area, etc)

I was having the same sort of mental conversation with myself earlier as well. It's been a couple of years but I decided that after finishing up with A2CS I'd redo the Geneforge series starting from the beginning. While the graphics of 1 are pretty basic, like a typical SW game the story really draws you in & your imagination fills in the details quite easily. The world is fairly open (some linear parts but once they are done there are usually a few choices in which direction to take. And as they've all been out for a while you can usually find a set of 1-5 on sale somewhere as a bundle for a very reasonable price so you'll more than get your money's worth there (nor will you feel your time is wasted once all is said & done if you do enjoy Jeff's style of game making (solid story, reasonably coherent gameplay).

I've always said that full auto is just an extremely fun way to convert dollars to noise... (provided that nobody is shooting in your direction at the time of course) In my 10+ years in the Army/National Guard there were only a couple when I didn't do my 'full auto is a waste of ammo' demonstration (this is back in the A1 days before the 3 round burst A2 was issued to most everyone). I'd have 3 of my bigger 'Rambo is a p***y' guys shoot one magazine each (60 rounds total) at a target using full auto however they wanted (generally sprayed from the hip.... sigh) while I'd shoot one magazine as fast as I could with aimed semi-auto fire at my own target. Almost always I'd have more hits on mine with 1/3rd the bullets than they would on theirs. Usually the point was made that suppressive fire is great & has a very important place, but if you're supposed to be trying to hit someone then just dumping a bunch of unaimed bullets into an area usually didn't do much. But enough of an odd thread drift in a forum focused on spelunking. And that right there is something that is regularly forgotten (often by me ). Each round in 'combat' is a compilation of roughly a minute's worth of actions rather than just a single swing of a sword at the enemy. And a minute can either go by really quickly or seem like forever when you are busy running around, diving behind cover, swinging a sword/jabbing a spear/shooting a bow/etc. One of those 90% miss rounds could just be one where the other guy managed to tie up your sword enough that you weren't able to swing it like you normally could or even if you weren't running around on the grid square, you were doing more (unseen) defensive actions. It really does even out in the end no matter how frustrating it is when you think you should be hitting the vampire that you're squared up against.

I've always given my melee fighters/front two guys at least 1-2 points in priest skills. In addition to the healing that was mentioned, a timely curing cast on someone who's turn is coming up can often prevent a death (especially as hp for poison/acid/lightning comes off of the player at the start of their turn). Also now that Jeff has gotten rid of the all-in-one buff/blessing spell having the first couple of guys able to cast protection & blessing during the first round frees up the spell casters to drop a couple of a-o-e spells into the midst of the other side. On some run throughs I've even had the front line guys build up their priest levels so that eventually they were able to cast 'divine fire' (which also means that they are high enough for mass healing/curing & unshackle mind duties as well). One or more points into priest skills every other level will get them to the 'divine fire' area somewhere around level 15-20, or right about the time when you could use 4 (or more depending on haste) divine fire fireballs decimating your enemies or at least put a major hurting on their plans to knock you around.

It's one of the upper level rewards for one of the multi-step end of game quests (if I could figure out how to do the 'spoiler' section I'd let you know exactly - but I can't find it.... sigh. Let me/us know if you really want to know)

I've heard from various sources at various times that during the Vietnam War it took anywhere from 50,000-200,000 bullets fired for EACH enemy killed (adding up all the rounds fired divided by estimated number of kills). In light of that suddenly the 90% hit rate doesn't look all that bad... (although I too am disgusted by the huge amount of 90% 'misses' round after round after round)

Back in the Pre-A1 days when Solberg, Patrick, Erika & others were getting the caves ready for habitation they designed their luminescent fungus to have a day night cycle as well. The big question though is why do they continue to have time zones down in the caves? Having to reset my hourglass when teleporting from Formello over to the Castle has always struck me as silly given that there is no sun crossing the sky. And while we're sort of on the subject, how come various dungeons require you light a candle/lantern when you enter them? The glowing fungus 'outside' doesn't change just because we went down a different corridor/entered a cave (which brings up another question - how can you enter a separate cave when you're already IN a cave to begin with?). Examination of fungus (fungi?) levels both inside & outside the area in question seem to show more or less the same coverage of the luminescent fungus & yet I still need a light. Things like this keep me up at night (or at least the time of day that I decided is 'night' given the lack of sky down here...)

Only the 4 skills on the bottom count towards the battle discipline total - Melee, Pole, Bows & Thrown. You need a total of 15 between the 4 of them (either through training or equipped items) to get Adrenaline Rush

That's exactly what I do. In a dungeon I'll take my party back to the front door & do the Imdrained (assuming that there hasn't been a rockfall or something else forcing me to go through the dungeon - then I'll use energy potions/elixirs as if I couldn't go back to town). My house rules say that unless I'm DEEP in Empire territory (where a wandering guard party is a distinct possibility or on a long one way trip such as going down the river to meet the Vahanati) I'd have been able to reach a town to recharge & then go back. Imdrained saves a lot of time just walking back & forth. Outdoors after a fight, if the party needs recharging I'll do it there too going on the assumption (again not deep in E territory or on the Dark Journey) that my guys could have found a quiet spot to hole up, grab a quick meal/nap & then get back on the glory road. As to the original question, I do give my casters levels in melee/pole (or more likely buy training for them once money isn't critically short). However it is mainly, as has been said, to give them access to hardiness & also build towards the adrenaline rush discipline. Also I tend to give them a point or two of the sword mage trait. This gives them a chance to wear some decent armor (runed plate doesn't arrive until later & even then there's only one of those) & one of the many great shields.

Perhaps so but the citizens of Silvar thank you. With the Empire invasion depressing the economy in general (excepting war stocks/production of course) & them losing two of their major trading partners with the sacking of Cotra & the closing of Ft. Avernum (and the hordes of new arrivals buying what they considered 'essentials' (or were talked into being essential - I still remember the killing made on left handed smoke shifters before Tor started warning the newbies about them)), even an infusion of $800 into the local economy helps. When you factor in what essentially amounts what some are claiming as war profiteering from Efram, Anastasia & Oss-Ess. Perhaps it just is a matter of them having no-bid contracts from the government & not worrying about any local sales. Perhaps wanting to price out the refugees & keep 'them' in 'their' portion of the city. Perhaps a combination of the two...) & Gary trying to recover from his failed long distance hot tub venture, there just isn't a whole lot of money circulating right now in the local economy. So while the $800 seems a bit painful right now, you should be able to easily make that much a few times over by going & sacking the Secret Slith hideout or the witches triad upriver a little bit (or if you're like many of the other adventurers who roll through town on a regular basis, you'll manage to somehow scoop everything with any sort of value right into your junk bag the instant that nobody is watching).

It's been a while but I think that the quartermaster in The Castle (right by the teleportation pylon) said that you could use a room there too. Myself, I usually just clutter up the portal room in the ToM. I figure that I'm passing through there often enough that I can pick up/drop off what I need when I do so.

It's a L2 barrier. I got the 1st level from Pryn's tower & then eventually was able to fight my way up to see Aimee & pick up the 2nd level (it will be amusing to see the general's face in Ft. Emerald once I finally get around to killing Lemonjello, get offered DB as a reward & ask him "is that it?..."). Anyway, the barrier in Bart's room came right down & I was able to go in & read the L3 Divine Fire with no problem.

Try a little bit south of the empire encampment that had an arrogant/taunting dervish but north of what used to be a major slith temple (or east of a now empire fort but west of some shipwrecked medicine...). All those intersecting lines should get you in the ballpark

Wait - 2 switches? Lots of undead & giants around there too along with vaporized empire troops? Are you at the first tower or have you been sent to the second tower? The second tower is where the switches that need to be thrown a certain way are (& they're right inside the front door, kind of hard to miss). The empire found Sixus' original tower & he had to run with his followers to the 2nd tower. There are directions to it in the 1st tower. Edit: and now I see that Lilith answered that too, I thought it was just an answer for Erika's tower. Ah well...